NAD, A little bit of low end

[MadAsAHatter]

With my guitar amp stable filling out, my bass setup was feeling a little neglected. All I had was my Mesa Titan and GK Neo 412 speaker cab. I was wanting a little more variety of inspiration. There's not a head switcher on the market that can handle the higher wattage of bass amps. At least not the amps I would have gotten. I went with the next best thing... preamps.

In the bass world power amps tend to be more neutral and transparent so tone shaping mostly comes from the preamp side. The Titan's power section is no different; it's relatively transparent. To test this, I have an Eden combo bass amp that I ran through the Titan's power section. It sounded the same as normal so I was good to go for preamps without the sound being colored by the Titan.

So, over the last few weeks I acquired a handful of bass preamps. I'm using a Voodoo Lab Hex to run all the preamps (including the Titan) through the Titan's power section. Now I have several clean, overdrive and full distortion tones to play with.

Going from top to bottom I have

• GK 2001RBP - My understanding is that this pre is a bit of a rarity. It was GK's flagship pre at the time and is held in high regards by bassists. It's 2 channels (clean/distortion) and has the signature GK grind to it. Both channels are really tight, punchy, and can get super loud. This one is a beast.
• Ampeg SVP-Pro - This one has the typical Ampeg sound and is supposed to be the closest thing to the more modern SVT line. It's one channel, but can be easily pushed into a solid overdrive. The graphic EQ is really nice for tone shaping too. This is a definite go to for that overdriven Ampeg tone al la Cliff Burton. Not I just need a Rickenbacker LOL!
• Egnater M4 - Most of you know I've gone a little down the Synergy/MTS rabbit hole. I've been experimenting with which modules work well for bass. No many do well because of too much saturation and lack of low end. Some work out alright and are useable for bass. I have some stock MTS modules I plan to send to Rob to be modded so they work better with bass.
• Eden Navigator - Super clean pre with lots of tone shaping options. It can go from warm and round to tight and punchy. I can get pretty much any clean bass tone out of this. It's not meant to go into overdrive, but with the right settings I can squeeze out a little bit of edge of breakup grit too.
• Of course the Mesa Titan which is just an awesome and super versatile bass amp. The overdrive sound on it is just perfect for a solid hard rock and into metal tone.
• Ampeg SVP-CL - Not pictured. I just bough this one, but it hasn't arrived yet. Like the name implies it's supposed to be the classic SVT sound. From the clips I've heard that's how it sounds to me. My understanding is it's meant to be the clean Ampeg tone and I don't think you can get much overdrive out of it. I got it tp pair with the SVP-Pro so I have both a clean and overdriven Ampeg tone.

Now the next step in the setup is to get everything in a rack case. Good thing this is mainly for home use and will stay put one all set up. Otherwise I might need a forklift to move things around.

 

[Music&Chaos]

Wow, that's a lotta tone to play with have fun!